Tag: Water | SpinSafe

Fulton County water billing services restored after cyberattack

February 24, 2024/in Internet Security

FULTON COUNTY, Ga. — Water billing service has been restored in Fulton County following a ransomware attack that hit systems last month.

Customers can now once again log into their accounts and make payments online after services were disrupted for nearly a month after the cybersecurity breach.

County officials say customers who had payments due during the outage will not incur late fees or other fees associated with the outage,

It’s still unclear if personal information has been distributed in the cyber attack, according to Fulton County officials.

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China’s Hackers Keep Targeting US Water and Electricity Supplies

February 4, 2024/in Internet Security

An indictment from the US Department of Justice may have solved the mystery of how disgraced cryptocurrency exchange FTX lost over $400 million in crypto. The indictment, filed last week, alleges that three individuals used a SIM-swapping attack to steal hundreds of millions in virtual currency from an unnamed company. The timing and the amount stolen coincides with FTX’s theft. Meanwhile, in a letter obtained by WIRED this week, seven lawmakers have demanded the DOJ stop funding biased and inaccurate predictive policing tools until the agency has a way to ensure law enforcement won’t use them in a way that has a “discriminatory impact.”

In Florida, prosecutors say a 17-year-old named Alan Winston Filion is responsible for hundreds of swatting attacks around the United States. The news of his arrest was first reported by WIRED days before law enforcement made it public. It was the culmination of a multi-agency manhunt to piece together a trail of digital breadcrumbs left by the teenager. In Ukraine, unmanned aerial vehicles have been powerful tools since the Russian invasion began in February 2022. But as the war rages on, another kind of unmanned robot has increasingly appeared on the front-lines: the unmanned ground vehicle, or UGV.

For months lawyers affiliated with an India based hacker-for-hire firm called Appin Technology have used legal threats to censor reporting about the company’s alleged cyber mercenary past. The EFF, Techdirt, MuckRock, and DDoSecrets are now pushing back, publicly sharing details for the first time about the firm’s efforts to remove content from the web. It’s a dangerous world out there, so we’ve also got a list of some major patches issued in January that you can use to update your devices to keep them secure.

And there’s more. Each week, we highlight the news we didn’t cover in-depth ourselves. Click on the headlines below to read the full stories. And stay safe out there.

For years Western security officials have warned about the threat of China collecting data about millions of people and the country’s hackers infiltrating sensitive systems. This week, Federal Bureau of Investigation director Christopher Wray said hackers affiliated…

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China is hacking Wi-Fi routers for attack on US electrical grid and water supplies, FBI warns • Graham Cluley

February 3, 2024/in Internet Security

China is hacking Wi-Fi routers for attack on US electrical grid and water supplies, FBI warns

Got two-and-a-half hours to spare?

Maybe instead of settling down to watch “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One”, you could check out this video where FBI director Christopher Wray warned the US Congress earlier this week of the risks posed by Chinese state-sponsored hackers.

As Wray described to the House select committee on the Chinese Communist party, a botnet operated by Volt Typhoon hacking group has been disrupted by law enforcement agencies.

The “vast majority” of affected routers are out-of-date NetGear and Cisco gear that are deemed to have reached their “end of life” and are no longer receiving security updates.

The routers were vulnerable to being recruited into Volt Typhoon’s so-called KV botnet if left unpatched. However, a court-approved US operation has deleted the malware from affected routers and took steps to prevent reinfection.

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According to the FBI’s Wray, Volt Typhoon is compromising small businesses and home office routers to hide the origin of future Chinese-backed cyber attacks.

“China’s hackers are targeting American civilian critical infrastructure, pre-positioning to cause real-world harm to American citizens and communities in the event of conflict. Volt Typhoon malware enabled China to hide as they targeted our communications, energy, transportation, and water sectors.”

Committee chairman Mike Gallagher said the attacks were the “cyberspace equivalent of placing bombs on American bridges, water treatment facilities and power plants.”

Although it’s a headline-grabbing thing to say, there is some truth in it. We have seen cyber attacks by nation-states against water facilities and electricity grids in the past. If successful, such attacks could have a significant impact.

Russia, for instance, managed to cut off internet access for tens of millions of Ukrainians, and in a separate cyber attack disrupted the power grid in the war-torn country.

“There is no economic benefit for these actions. There is no intelligence-gathering rationale,” continued Gallagher. “The sole purpose is to be ready to destroy American infrastructure, which will…

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